Job's Year

By Joseph Hansen

Book Overview

Job's Year concentrates on a man who reaches a point in his life where he no longer accepts self-delusion or flattery. It is his time of truth, the time to reflect on his life disappointments with clear-eyed irony and scaled-down dreams. Moving from past to present, memories and dreams flood his mind as Oliver Jewett comes face-to-face with the inadequacies of his life and the pressing problems of the present. He returns to his family home to support his elder sister, a celebrated artist, who is dying. In this small California town in the Sierra Madres foothills, he encounters ghosts of his youth, both places and people. Desperate to be an actor from his teens, he's eked out a modest but now failing career as he struggles to keep his closest relationships. Fellow actors, agents, lovers and their families pepper his world with challenges, annoyances and little satisfaction. When he finally accepts that his younger lover of ten years is in love with Jewett's modest celebrity but cares little for the man he is, he's ready for a new road. As the year progresses, more doors close, but new opportunities to make sane decisions baffle and block him. Jewett perseveres, accepts defeat where necessary, and battles these ghosts as he seeks a safe place to become the man he's always dreamt he could be.The wise and mature novel of a writer at the peak of his craft, Job's Year moves with masterful swiftness and grace through the human mysteries of love, art, and death. It joins Backtrack and A Smile in His Lifetime, three non-detective novels that master stylist Joseph Hansen wrote in the 1980s, now reissued by ReQueered Tales."Job's Year treads the fine line between faith and modern existentialism ... a walk along the tight-ropes between madness and sanity ... Hansen is at his best, moving from past to present, memories unlocked by a change of light, smell of perfume, feelings of love, lust, loneliness ... The plot and characters are] brought to life with grace, style, and subtle surety." - Los Angeles Times"Truly good books leave their readers changed ... Job's Year may do that to you." - San Francisco Chronicle"Hansen is quite simply one of the best stylists writing today; his ability to capture the most mundane nuances of modern life, as well as the most complex emotional conflicts, is little short of astonishing." - Manifest"An intelligent, compassionate and honest treatment of a decent human being who happens to be homosexual ... Hansen writes sardonically and perceptively about the realities of his life, whether they involve a drunken con artist, a rich woman who knows she is being used but cannot resist it because 'he's so good in bed', and the one woman whom Oliver ever had a close personal relationship with ... Hansen never uses the word 'gay' ... He understands very well that being homosexual in our society is still not always the happiest condition in the world." - Publishers Weekly

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1959902350
• ISBN13: 9781959902355
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Requeered Tales
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Absorbing, poignant and moving

Oliver Jewett, fifty seven, an actor who never quite made it to the top, has reached the point in his life when he considers what he has achieved though his career; and he is not particularly proud of what he finds. He is a strikingly handsome man, and the years have taken nothing away from that, and while he blames part of his failure on his good looks he also acknowledges the fact that he just is not a great actor. He lives with his lover of ten years, the now thirty two year old Billy, but their relationship is reaching a crisis point, Billy is perhaps more in love with Oliver the actor than Oliver the private person. This year he also reconnects with his sister, five years his senior and crippled since childhood, now an internationality renowned artist; she is terminally ill. But Oliver's dream is to quit acting and buy a local bakery, the bakery owned by the Pfeffer family, now run by the son of Joey Pfeffer who when they were nineteen was one of Jewett's first intimate loves of his youth. Oliver is an easy going, self-effacing and caring man; a fact which causes others at times to take advantage of him. He is a most appealing character, and while he make mistakes, these are not the frustrating sort that some authors seem to delight in leading their main characters into, but they are mistake with which one can empathise. Job's Year is a leisurely and melancholy tale, but not without its occasional dramas. As we follow Jewett through the year we also gradually piece together his past, his early struggles, his lovers both male and female. Told in twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, in typical Hansen fashion, it has all the Hansen trademarks: set in his beloved California, references to changes not always for the better that time has wrought, handsome older man sought by younger lovers, a main protagonist who loves the finer things of life, and is rich in detail which yet never gets in the way of the story. It is a most absorbing story, poignant and very moving. While one might feel terribly sad for Jewett's lot, and while he himself perhaps is happily resigned to the whatever might be the outcome, surely only a hard hearted reader will be left unaffected by Job's Year

a very good gay Californian novel

I'll only confirm what Mark Jones has written: 'Job's Year' is one of my favourite novels. It's intensely sad and moving and I always associate it with another Hansen novel with similar themes, 'A Smile in His Lifetime'. Joseph Hansen died last year.

Job's Year

One of the finest novels I have ever read. Superior crafting of characters. I rank this novel by Joseph Hansen along with the best of Mary Renaud, and by far supreior to anything written bt Hemingway, Tennesseee Williams, and many others.

Excellent, Quiet Book

Job's Year describes a year in the life of a talented, aging television actor, who shares his life with a much younger, irresponsible, but highly gifted furnisher restorer. During the year, he must care for his sister, who is dying of cancer, and transition to a new career, having lost his interest in acting. (There is a very amusing sequence when he gets a role on a "Dynasty"-like show and then is written out of the script because he is too good.) His partner loves him because of his minor stardom, which makes the transition from acting to operating a bakery (his dream) particularly difficult. Joseph Hanson writes with humor and a well-developed sense of irony. His hero is a stoic, who persists with very little in life to nourish him. Job's Year is a rewarding read.